Saturday Flashback: Günther feat. Samantha Fox – Touch Me

“Got to number one in Sweden.”

Tim: I normally pay no attention to Big Brother – I’ve watched a few series in my time, but nothing since 2009 – but this year it turns out Samantha Fox is in the celebrity version, and finding that out put me in mind of this, which got to number one in Sweden.

Tom: I’m learning that “got to number one in Sweden” is not necessarily an endorsement.

Tim: Well, you say that, but it’s a cover of Samantha’s 1986 Touch Me (I Want Your Body), and that was a perfectly decent piece of ’80s pop, holding up fairly well over time. This, then, is…

Tim: …almost entirely awful.

Tom: Yep. Apart from the parts that are just cribbed from the original.

Tim: Her redone vocals for the chorus are fine, as is the rest of the chorus, musically, but the rest of it is just not good. The beat is dull and repetitive, mostly so when it’s not being sung over, bizarrely. Günther himself sounds like he’s trying to be H.P. Baxter, but is failing miserably.

Tom: Two Xs in Baxxter, although for the discount version here perhaps your styling is more apt.

Tim: Do you know, I have never felt so let down by bastard autocorrect, but you could be right with that second part – he looks like someone who should be barred from going within 100 metres of any park ever. And even though that chorus is good, the amount it gets repeated led me to be thinking “it must be nearly over now” before I was even two minutes in.

Tom: Ha! Yes, about the same here. Still, number one in Sweden.

Tim: Oh, Sweden. Why?

Mohombi – Infinity

“Where is all the wind coming from?”

Tim: 2016 arguably has two massive musical clichés. One, the “boom-wherp-boom-wherp” dance line I mentioned on Wednesday; the other, a pineapple. So Tom, I have a proposition for you. Let’s EMBRACE it – the summer, the warmth, the citrus feeling, the upcoming weekend – and introduce TROPICAL FRIDAYS.

Tom: Oh crikey. I’m okay with that, but let’s see how long it lasts. Tropical house can’t be a thing forever.

Tim: We’ve already had MØ and Matoma this month, so I say we head to Tesco, grab a bunch of coconuts, and just make it official.

Tom: That is very tropical.

Tim: So let’s get the obvious right out of the way: the narrative of the video doesn’t really make any sense at all – why has he chopped all his belongings in half?

Tom: Why have they pixelated all the drinks?

Tim: Why do we have palm trees, a beach and midday outside his windows but sunset and rain outside her indoors orchard?

Tom: That sounds like a euphemism.

Tim: Oh, it does a bit doesn’t it? Sorry. But also: where is all the wind coming from, given that the windows on the far side of his room are closed? And most of all, why can’t they both just climb out of said windows and meet up behind the house rather than smashing the entire damn wall down with a curiously not-chopped-in-half sledgehammer that he apparently keeps lying around in his living room?

BUT ANYWAY, we’re not here purely to question the video – we’re also here to discuss the music, which is, well, entirely typical of the genre. All the bits are there – marimba, steel drums, and I think we’ve even got some pan pipes in there at some point.

Tom: There’s definitely a bit of 90s influence in here too. That’s not a complaint, just an observation.

Tim: All in all, a great start for our new regular feature.

Tom: I give it a month.

Tim: Oh, you haven’t seen how much tripe we get sent. Next Friday’s a STORMER.

Benjamin feat. Sweet California – Man On The Moon

“This is how you do a summer song.”

Tim: Take one Finnish singer, add one Swedish Spanish girlband, start with some acoustic guitars and happy lyrics, place in a recording studio for four minutes and it turns out you’ll find yourself a decent pop song. Add in a couple of beachballs, a swimming pool and a few hot models, you might even find a video as well.

Tom: And this is how you do a summer song. My one complaint is those “i-i-i-i-i” bits. There’s nothing particularly astonishing in here, but it’s a nice enough track.

Tim: Isn’t it just? Mind you, I say happy lyrics, they could in theory almost be written by the old guy from last year’s John Lewis advert, but let’s pretend that watching someone constantly from a long way away isn’t creepy – after all, the girls involved clearly have no problem with it – and I can get on board.

Tom: That’s fair. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Tim: Upbeat music, generally fun and pleasant vibe, fairly good summery third track from an album stuff, really. No complaints from me.

Eytan – Wanna Be Your Lover

“Whoever did the mixing and production on this: your boss needs to have some strong words with you.”

Tim: Eytan’s PR people performed the rather impressive feat of sending out publicity material without any information about him as a person whatsoever, so I’ve not got much info for you, I’m afraid, aside from how his vocals are ‘serene’ and that he’s been ‘praised by the musical elite’.

Tom: That’s a very non-specific endorsement, there.

Tim: And it’s…well, a bit messy, really. For a start you’ve got that thing where the melody appears, drops for a drumbeat, appears, drops for drumbeat, repeating 120-something times a minute. It seems to be becoming something of a cliché – we’ve heard it twice already this month alone, and it’s not hugely pleasant.

Tom: I actually cringed when I heard it. It’s been around for years, originally an artefact of poor compression, and now apparently a stylistic choice. I can’t say it’s one I enjoy, I imagine when you’re used to it your brain starts tuning it out, but that ain’t happening yet.

Tim: No – and if it wasn’t disorientating enough already, the way the vocal’s gone on top of that rather than coming before it just makes it even messier, to my ears.

Tom: I agree! Whoever did the mixing and production on this: your boss needs to have some strong words with you.

Tim: On the other hand, the rest of it isn’t that bad, though not hugely original – it’s so lovely to have a return visit from the piano, back from the glory days of eighteen months ago, so hello to you. And back to the PR, apparently Eytan’s planning to hang around until he’s made a successful career, so, erm, yeah.

Tom: The joke’s just too easy.

Tim: Guess we’ll see what happens.

Helena Paparizou – Fiesta

Tim: Lest you forget, Helena’s half-Greek, and so it’s only natural that that side might come out upon creating a Mediterranean-flavoured summer beach track. Like this one, for example (which, before you ask, is not about a three-door hatchback).

Tim: Unlike yesterday, I don’t need to worry about speaking the language because she’s recorded an English version as well; also unlike yesterday, the music and the lyrics complement each other perfectly, with chorus lines like “my heart’s about to explode…we are two bodies in fiesta mode”.

Tom: Okay, that’s the worst Transformers power up I’ve ever heard of. Fiesta mode? Really?

Tim: Basically: get out on the beach/expansive patio, cocktails in your hands and bikinis and swimming shorts on, and probably off again later if we’re being honest.

Tom: We’ve heard this all before, so many times. And yes, we’ve heard better, although this is probably in at least the top… half?

Tim: It’s not a remotely original vibe, as a good dozen of these can be guaranteed to appear every summer; right now, though, sitting on my balcony, with the sun staring down at me, in the knowledge that I’ve a couple of weeks off work soon, I’ll absolutely take this exactly as it is.

Panetoz – Om

Tim: Let’s get the week off to a good start, shall we? Nice upbeat party track for you from Panetoz, with a title translating to If.

Tim: Each chorus line is basically “If [example of shit happening happens], we’ll have each other,” which I suppose is nice as long as you’re not the husband and wife in The Purge, but that might be too obscure a reference to stick with so I’ll move on.

Tom: Far too obscure for me. But at least, as the old saying goes, they got straight to the chorus.

Tim: Basically, for anyone not interested in violent and somewhat disturbing sociologically experimental films, it’s a let’s have fun track. So much fun, in fact, that to be honest I can’t imagine where the lyrics came from – it’s one of the biggest disjoints between music and lyrical mood I’ve heard in a while. UPBEAT PARTY SHOUT YEAH so let’s imagine the world ending PARTY WOOOH!!!

Tom: And it is a pretty good party track, isn’t it? Sure, it’s lightweight, but it gets the job done. Horn section in the background, clapping and cheering samples, boxes ticked.

Tim: Ah, well – fortunately for me I don’t know anywhere near enough Swedish to let that distract me, so I’m just going to feel happy.

Saturday Flashback: Pet Shop Boys – Always On My Mind

“Congratulations, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000!”

Tom: This week, we saw Pet Shop Boys in concert. It was an incredible gig, and as we left, I said I was surprised that they ended on a cover. And you said…

Tim: “Wait, it’s a cover?”

Tom: I quelled my initial reaction of “how could you not know that?” because, congratulations, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000!

Tim: Hooray!

Tom: Always On My Mind is a country standard. It’s been recorded by dozens of artists — there’s a history on Wikipedia, of course — but I’d like to pick out just the two most popular versions that aren’t Pet Shop Boys, because the difference between them is astonishing.

The canonical version was sung by Elvis Presley, recorded just after he separated from his wife, and is one of his best-known and most loved records. In fact, the only reason the Pet Shop Boys version exists is because they performed it on a tribute-to-Elvis TV show.

Tim: Oh…oh, I do recognise that, now I hear it.

Tom: And it’s emotional. It’s an apology of sorts, and that’s certainly how it came across, but in hindsight it almost sounds like a passive-aggressive apology, the sort provided by someone who doesn’t know why they’re apologising, but knows that they have to. The instrumentation is almost triumphant.

Why do I say that? Because the hindsight is provided by Willie Nelson’s absolutely heartbreaking, wistful version, ten years later.

Tim: Ooh.

Tom: It sounds like an apology. It sounds like it should. Everything, from that one quiet “you did, you did” from a female vocalist in the first verse, to the instrumentation that somehow manages to avoid Elvis’s triumphalism despite being almost as large and full. It sounds like the song of someone who is genuinely sorry.

Tim: It really does. It’s an almost completely different song, and it’s lovely.

Tom: Despite my love for the Pet Shop Boys cover, to me, this will always be the canonical version of Always On My Mind.

Tim: Nice to know. I’ll throw in my two cents cents: looking at that Wikipedia article you linked to, I realised why the Pet Shop Boys’ version is the only one I really know: because it’s on my family’s primary Christmas compilation album, due to its Christmas number one status. Anyway, thank you very much for today’s education.

Bright Light Bright Light feat. Elton John – Symmetry of Two Hearts

“Elton doesn’t exactly take control much, does he?”

Tim: We last featured Bright Light Bright Light here a couple of years back; somewhat surprised that he wangled a feat. Elton John.

Tom: I wonder if there is some connection via record companies? Or perhaps Elton John just finds bands he likes and asks “hey, want me to sing something for you?”

Tim: Since then, there’ve actually been a couple more – May’s All In The Name Of, which we annoyingly never found time to cover, and this, which we have found time to cover. Hence us covering it.

Tim: Hmm. Elton doesn’t exactly take control much, does he?

Tom: I’m not entirely sure he was in there. Come on, at least give him a line with a million-dollar-piano solo.

Tim: I think I can make out his voice for a second or two around the 2:49 mark and maybe elsewhere in that middle eight wooaahh-ing, but mate, really, put some effort in. On the other hand, Rod has perfectly decent vocals to fill in for him, and you’ve got some top notch choreography going on in that video (makes sense, given the title of his album is Choreography).

Tom: And it’s a pretty good pop song, isn’t it? The production is lovely, the melody is great, and I found myself tapping along with that chorus. That’s rare.

Tim: Musically we’ve excellent synth work and brass all blended together nicely, so sod Elton’s lack of being, I’m happy with this as it is.

Tom: Maybe Elton’s doing that sax bit in the final chorus. It’s a good sax bit.

SMILO – Young Again

“Young people singing about wanting to be young again doesn’t quite make sense.”

Tim: Their Melodifestivalen entry may not have been as successful as they’d hoped, but they do at least have a slightly higher profile – they’ve got a Vevo channel now and everything. Anyway, here’s their new one.

Tim: And that is, well, perfectly listenable and danceable really.

Tom: I don’t think it’s either of those!

Tim: Oh. It’s not massive praise there in any case, I’ll grant you, but at the risk of going “argh, all sounds the same” old person, you need to be either be special or very lucky to stand out, and this song doesn’t quite have that.

Tom: Careful, that “all sounds the same” is basically my shtick. But look, that chorus is so overcompressed that it’s difficult to listen to. And it’s syncopated in such a strange way that, yes, there’s giant four on the floor percussion in there, but I’m not sure I could tell you with any confidence when any of it lands.

Tim: Oh, shame. There’s one part I actually really do like a lot, which is the close of the middle eight. I’m not quite sure why, especially since young people singing about wanting to be young again doesn’t quite make sense, but the steady vocal accompanied by just a single drum beat pattern giving swift way into full dance mode does strike me as particularly effective.

Tom: It’s just a shame those lyrics are so anodyne. As someone who generally likes terrible, cheesy Europop, I shouldn’t mind this at all: but for some reason it just completely grates me the wrong way. Probably the early reference to a teddy bear.

Tim: All in, let’s say about 68%, then.

Tom: That is a massively generous grade.

Micky Skeel – Kys Ham Nu

“That is very mildly tropical.”

Tim: Crack open a bottle of pineapple juice, as it’s time to get mildly tropical!

Tom: That is very mildly tropical.

Tim: Micky’s Danish, and was formerly part of PULS who we wrote about a few times; this is a different style, and it’s really not all that bad is it? If you’re a fan of languages being basically sonically interchangeable, you’ll be pleased to know the title translates to Kiss Him Now.

Tom: I love sentences in other languages that just sound like they’re really angry English.

Tim: The logic? Well, Micky basically wants to find out if he’s over the target of the song. Which is fair enough – a slightly unusual way of finding closure, perhaps, but if it works for him and she’s got a new squeeze, who are we to complain?

Musically it’s, well – depends whether you think tropical house should’ve been killed off six months ago or if you’re happy with it seeping through into other genres, really.

Tom: Like pineapple juice through a sieve, it’s a very small and slow seepage. I do think it works here: at least they aren’t just using Kygo’s synth patches.

Tim: I’ve no particular problems with it, so here’s to tropical pop! Otherwise known as Lilt, now I come to think about it. Hmm.